


betray the devil to his fellow

by spacehairdresser



Category: 91 Days (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark Fantasy, Deal with a Devil, Gen, Mentions of Canonical Character Death, Mentions of Violence, ToT: Monster Mash, Trick or Treat 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 11:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8203987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/pseuds/spacehairdresser
Summary: On the night his family is murdered, Angelo meets a stranger in the woods and makes a promise.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [makiyakinabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/makiyakinabe/gifts).



> Happy Trick or Treat, Makiyakinabe! I loved your prompts, and hope you enjoy this little fic even though it's a bit of a loose interpretation.
> 
> I guess this is what happens when you rip the Shakespeare out of 91 Days and forcibly replace it with Marlowe. Except for the part where the title is, like half the episode titles, yoinked from the Scottish play. Something wicked this way comes...

Angelo almost freezes, that first night. It isn't safe in the woods, so close to the house, but he's wandered for so long without finding his way out that he spends the night curled against a tree, not actually hoping to sleep. Into the woods — he thinks of the fairy tales his mother had told him, that he told to Luce as he got older. _If I leave the woods, this will all be real._  He has stopped shivering, the cold growing more and more distant even as the snow soaks through his clothes. _Then it can't be real_. 

He should have seen the tall man coming, but it's as if he isn't there until he's right in front of Angelo, hunching down to look him in the eye. Another masked man, only pale eyes and a hint of pale skin visible behind the black cloth, but for some reason, Angelo is not afraid. _This is a friend_ , he thinks, and for the first time since the men came to his house feels a glimmer of something besides terror and wild, blistering grief.

"I don't want you to die tonight, Angelo," the tall man says, and in spite of the fabric covering half his face, his voice is not muffled at all. It cuts, clean as a knife, through the rising numbness. "There are some things I'd like you to do for me, and they are things I think you'd like to do as well." There's a smile in his voice, Angelo thinks. It, too, is a bit like a knife. "Do you understand me?"

An image rises in his mind as if placed by someone else: his family's killers struck down, a pool of blood spreading to lap at his feet like he imagines an ocean wave. A gun in his hand — and suddenly, there is warmth in his fingers again. Warmth in his chest, too, as he recognizes that feeling that has begun to spread over his fear and sorrow. A keen, searing hatred. He meets the man's eyes and nods. 

"I'm glad." Angelo realizes, as his mind continues to clear, that there is no movement behind the cloth where the stranger's mouth and jaw should be. "When you are older, I'll find you again so you can know what to do. In the meantime, it would be best if you don't freeze in these woods." With a strange formality in his movements, he removes his coat and holds it out like an offering. When Angelo doesn't move at first, he pushes it closer. "Take it, Angelo."

He does; it hangs almost comically off his small frame when he pulls it on with cold-clumsy hands, but it's warm, no,  _hot_  like no garment he's ever worn. He's able to fold almost his entire body inside of it. A voice in his mind that sounds like his mother's (his throat tightens at the thought) reminds him to mind his manners— he means to thank the stranger, but even as he looks up, the man is gone. No footprints in the snow, just a melted circle where he had stood, as if his body had given off some supernatural heat. Angelo thinks suddenly of Sunday mornings, of the priest's sonorous voice as he spoke of hellfire and damnation, and shudders.

_To Corteo's_. He has to leave the woods. On trembling legs, he rises to his feet, feeling again how brutal the sting of snow on exposed skin is. _To Corteo's, even if it makes this real._

 

When years have passed, he thinks of it as a dream, the delusion of a child maddened by grief and the cold. The old women on his street murmur to each other that he's touched by the devil, but when he overhears, he almost laughs to himself. It isn't until he receives that letter that the night returns to him with clarity. That inhuman heat flares again in his chest as he reads, _I write to you as an old friend..._ He sees the name _Vanetti_  and remembers his vision of blood. It isn't a sudden, violent fantasy this time; as he reads the letter over and over, gears begin to turn, thoughts of revenge crystallize into method.

There is no signature, not that he expects one. It closes with the sentence, _I gave you back your life. When you are finished, I will come to collect_. 


End file.
